Sabre Hockey celebrates championship

A group of 13- and 14-year-old youth hockey players traveled south from Chicago to Springfield, Ill., to participate in the annual "Springfield Freeze" hockey tournament hosted at The Nelson Center. The 17-player team from the Chicago area represented the Sabre Travel Hockey Club organization that is based out of Naperville.

The Sabre Bantam team began their weekend journey with an early morning loss against a Southern Illinois travel team from the Twin Bridges area. After making a few minor adjustments to the game plan, the coaching staff, led by Kevin Curran, were able to energize the players and the end result was a clean sweep of the remaining games to place the Sabre Bantam team into the championship game as the number one seed. Having to defeat a very strong contender from Bloomington, Ind. (The Blades), the Sabre team was able to finish strong with scoring 14 goals in four games.

Even though the offense was able to put "points on the board", it was the defensive play that shut down the competition, led by goalies Allison Kurek and Patrick Hickey. The defensive wall was supported by six competitive players (Nick Bellandi, Max Houck, Jacob Madaro, Tyler Paulson, Alex Rang and AJ Svac) that was comprised of both physical size and lighting speed. But when the pressure was on to bury the frozen puck, it was the offensive players (Mitch Ciaglo, Danny Dirst, Scott Dunsire, Jeff Eckert, Trevor Fisk, Rick Hatton, Evan Pardo, Matt Spangler, Kyler Wujciga) that led the way during the championship game.

After several days of tough competition, the Sabres team reached the championship game and on the final day after 45 minutes of competitive play, the Sabres skated away with the championship trophy defeating the home team favorite (The Springfield Kings) with a final score of 4 to 2.